i will learn someday what it truly means to love and give thanks

... which makes me sound ungrateful and privileged but hear me out

last night, thanksgiving, was probably the most painful one yet. the house was slightly too small for 20 people, and there were at most only three places to reside: the living room, where football was being blasted, the kitchen, where people were anxiously preparing dinner, or outside, where the san francisco cold seeped into whatever it could to an uncomfortable extent. eventually we ate dinner, outside, and by the time i could finally serve myself, all the food had lost its heat. i nauseously shoveled small spoonfuls of cold mashed potatoes and cauliflower into my mouth while having for the tenth time the same conversation about my plans for next semester. small children were running around and gripping their greasy hands onto each other’s limbs, their energy annoyingly infinite. adults talked what that they didn’t even realize was small talk. and i sat and watched. i had wished there was some corner i could hide myself in. i am substantially older than all my cousins, and of course substantially younger than all my relatives, so each family gathering is the same, like this. i am forced to attend and there it not a single bit of enjoyment i can find in it. please do not assume i am not trying. i think this may sound very harsh, like i groundlessly despise my family. i do not mean for that. but, oh. i don’t know. the whole event exists only for the sake of doing what is expected to be done. with no true heart. a desperate midlife crisis attempt to create a heart from what has been many years dead. sip the wine, later bourbon, and fall into ignorance. and none of these people are ever my people. and it is just too painful to pretend they are. if they are each other’s people then good for them. good for them. i feel sick inside and hopeless. i feel so, so stuck.

the reason why holidays like thanksgiving, as well as christmas and, most horribly, my birthday, are so difficult for me is because i cannot keep myself from imagining how it could be different. i cannot keep myself from envisioning the following scene: i am gathered around a table with people who truly know and get me, a love is sitting beside me, wine bottles are being passionately emptied; the evening is slowly gathering itself into darkness with a sense of true fulfillment; all are finding a great pleasure in existing solely for the moment, in existing solely for the care and love that imbues the air with it’s lovely warmth; a beautiful red; full, very full.

i really am claustrophobic, here. here, in my house where i cannot escape my family, not even within my room. the door to the backward swinging swinging shut open shut. stomp stomp footsteps downstairs. thud thud footsteps past my door. 8am each morning the dishes clanking around. i am cramped in here, in my town where i know every inch so well, too well, inescapably well. and what is most painful is that i cannot see, realistically, a near future out of here. essentially it is financially impossible. unless i became a vagabond. which i suppose is an option. i am leaving for three months next year, february to may. but even from here i can already see it’s temporality. it may end before it begins. it may leave me worse. worse to starve after a taste than to simply starve.

for years, years years years, i have been so so stuck. stuck stuck. i hate and cry and am ripping ripping through the inside of myself. i know i can know more and i need to know more so very desperately.